Film Review: Lincoln (2012)

The trap that the overwhelming majority of biopics fall into is attempting to fit an entire life into a couple of hours. In doing so, these films tend to gloss over details, switch others around, and general contort and distort the messiness of real life into a simple three-act structure that in no way resembles reality, let alone the reality of the story being told. That's not to say that some lives don't fit such a structure, or that the structure is inherently flawed, but the overall approach tends to turn the lives of interesting, vibrant human beings into staid dramas full of self-importance. Crucially, they often fail to put across why the subject was important enough to deserve having their story told in the first place.

Film Review: Looper (2012)

Time travel will be invented in 2074, and because it is such a dangerous invention, it will almost instantly be outlawed. This does little to stop the technology becoming the sole domain of criminal organisations who use it as a completely untraceable way of killing. They send people back through time to 2044, where assassins known as 'Loopers' kill and dispose of them for huge sums of money, allowing them to live out a glamorous lifestyle amongst the poverty and violence of their own time. The one caveat to the arrangement is that one day they will have to kill their future selves in order to "close the loop" of their existence. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one such Looper who has reached the end of his contract, but at the crucial moment he allows his future (Bruce Willis) to slip away from him. With his former colleagues pursuing him on account of his failure, Joe has to figure out what his future self hopes to achieve and close the loop. Which is where things get complicated.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 10 - The Dark Knight Rises

Following on nicely from our Blockbusters episode, this special Bat-episode of Shot/Reverse Shot finds me and Joe discussing The Dark Knight Rises, the final instalment in Christopher Nolan's Batman series. Along the way we discuss how the film works as a conclusion to a trilogy (pretty well), as a film in its own right (perhaps not as well) and we offer our thoughts on Nolan's work in general. However, since this wouldn't be an episode of Shot/Reverse Shot without a little bit of off-topic waffle, we also talk about The Big Sleep, point out in what way Batman Returns is better than The Bible, and fail to get Joseph Gordon-Levitt's name right.

We go into a fair deal of detail about the plot, so you positively should not listen to this podcast until after watching the film itself.

You can stream the episode below or subscribe to the podcast using iTunes. If you choose the latter, please listen, rate and review.